Greater Compensation Does Not A Great Leader Make: What Causes Motivation To Grow?

Jack Zenger
, ContributorI write about leadership development and building strengths.Opinions expressed by Forbes Contributors are their own.

Organizations typically increase the pay of managers over their years of their employment. While the policy and practice is not explicitly stated, there is a corresponding unwritten rule that says this: “We expect your leadership skills to increase as you go, and to more than compensate for your increase in pay.” However, it’s clear that some leaders improve as their career progresses, while others stay pretty much level, and a few unfortunate leaders get worse.

Why do some leaders improve while others plateau or even languish over time?

What motivates some leaders to keep improving? Why do some improve at a fast pace and others coast along on the same plateau year after year? Our research suggests that one key factor is where these leaders (and their organizations) focus their development. Do the leaders focus most heavily on improving their weaknesses, or do they work to increase their strengths?

The choice to develop a strength brings several proven advantages. Our research, based on the feedback from thousands of 360 degree reviews, shows the following:

Those who work on strengths improve 2 -3 times as much as those who elect to work on weaknesses.

Working on a strength has a seemingly contagious effect. Other beneficial behaviors are pulled up along with the behavior in focus. However, the same does not occur if you grind away on a weakness instead.

When people hone in and develop even a relatively small number of critical strengths, the impact on the organization skyrockets. However bringing up the low scores on the weak characteristics has no measurable effect on business outcomes.

We believe that one of the reasons for this phenomena stems from the leaders’ motivation to change. When working on a weakness, there is often an attitude of coercion, with the person thinking to themselves, “I have to do this, because I’m being told to.” In other cases there's a “spoonful of medicine” attitude in which the person is thinking, “I don’t like this, but it is probably good for me to comply.” So they hold their nose and take the medicine. Furthermore, the weak behavior pertains to something they don’t enjoy, which in large part explains why they got the low score in the first place.

Choosing a strength, on the other hand, brings out an entirely different set of dynamics. As Daniel Pink notes in his book, Drive, the factors that truly motivate people are not the ones that many business leaders assume. (Fellow Forbes contributor George Anders wrote about this a bit in his article on commissions and salespeople here.) The strongest motivator is not primarily money. Likewise, it isn’t “carrots and sticks,” or any version of traditional rewards and punishments. Instead, Pink argues that real motivation comes from having purpose, exercising autonomy and gaining mastery. With these principles in mind, it is easy to see why working on strengths is the superior path.

Working on a strength allows the development of true mastery. Your eye is now affixed on a star, and your aspiration is aligned with becoming not just passable, but highly proficient at an essential leadership skill.

For more results from our most recent set of studies, you can get our newest eBook, Chapter 1 of How To Be Exceptional: Drive Leadership Success by Magnifying your Strengthshere, or you can order the complete book from Amazon here.